The story behind the cover: The film “Squaring the Circle – The Story of HIPGNOSIS”
February 16, 2024
As part of the exhibition HIPGNOSIS.BREATHE - Album cover art and photo design by Aubrey Powell & Storm Thorgerson. Celebrating 50 Years THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON The LUDWIGGALERIE recently opened its first worth seeing The documentary film “Squaring the Circle – The Story
of HIPGNOSIS” by Dutch filmmaker Anton Corbjin. The event was accompanied by a Q&A with Aubrey Powell.
The documentary traces the beginnings of Hipgnosis founders Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson. The personal and professional relationship between Powell and Thorgerson runs like a thread through the film. Corbijn lets Powell tell the story of how numerous album covers came about using large-format prints of the designs.
Many of the designs are linked to ideas that go against the norm at the time and illustrate in free sugar intake how complex the editing of images was in a time before Photoshop. A portrait of Peter Gabriel for the cover of his album of the same name was shot quickly, but the scratches that the singer seems to make in his own image,
However, they have to be specially manufactured in a laborious process. Thorgerson in particular developed the most unusual ideas to besonders attention-grabbing The duo spares no expense or effort to create works for the album designs. Hipgnosis sets itself apart from other record designs: they rarely work with portraits of the band members
or the title of the albums. So shows the cover of the album “Atom Heart Mother” by Pink Floyd is a cow. There are no references to the title or band in the original design.
All these unusual ideas and always courageous implementations of their ideas make Hipgnosis a legend. The rise of the duo is accompanied by images of bubbling
champagne and mountains of money. The drug consumption of the music scene in which Powell and Thorgerson move is initially portrayed with surreal images,
which seem to be a source of inspiration for the album covers, and then illustrated in increasingly dark sequences. Particularly impressive is is physical and psychological decay by Syd Barrett, the former singer and guitarist of Pink Floyd. After leaving the band in 1968 due to his drug problems, he surprisingly reappeared in 1975 in
At this point, Barrett is hardly known by his former bandmates. again to recognize.
With the advent of a much smaller music medium than the record, the CD, the importance of creative cover designs is also diminishing. The film not only tells the story of Hipgnosis, but also the story of a special era. The black and white look in which the film is immersed, and which is only made more vivid by the coloured
The film takes the audience back in time, as it is broken up by the cover image. There are also interviews with companions such as Peter Gabriel, Paul McCartney and members of Pink Floyd. This exciting time full of glamour, crises, lust for life and weariness of life allowst probably also the rise of the photo design studio and shapes the work of the two Founders.
However, we don’t want to give too much away in advance: the film “Squaring the Circle – The Story of HIPGNOSIS” will be released in German cinemas on March 14th.
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